ABSTRACT
Civic festivals were occasions for a governor to embody Roman authority, and for local notables to visibly associate themselves with that authority. They also, however, represented opportunities for non-elite citizens to put pressure on local notables, and for eminent visitors from other cities to compete for precedence. Both the governor and the cityscape itself were integral to the performance of the social relations revealed and renegotiated during the festivities. And both, on the terms of actor-network theory, were actors, defining and defined by a network of competitive interest groups. The implications of this interpretive model are discussed in relation to the Koina Asias festival at Ephesus, where the proconsul of Asia and the monuments of Ephesus were interpreted variously by different interest groups, but always in relation to each other.
